“I need more MQLs”…said no Chief Sales Officer EVER!

Why is that? If Marketing has gone through the process to qualify a lead, why wouldn’t sales be enthusiastic for the help? It is complicated and has a lot to do with a business’ evolution from an entrepreneurial start-up to a business that can scale, and drive sustained, profitable growth.

Scaling Often Means Silos

In the early stages of growth, there may be no formal “Marketing” function at all, or maybe there are 1-2 people who fulfill this role in a reactionary way.  Since the business is small, there is good communication and collaboration, and everyone is well-versed in the company’s products & services, targets, and objectives.  However, once serious growth sets in, the Marketing function gets “professionalized” and carves out a role for itself in demand generation. The problem comes when Marketing and Sales no longer communicate closely and begin to form distinct ideas of what the characteristics of a good prospect are.

In many companies we have worked with, silos start forming and Marketing and Sales both think they know what “good” looks like and the other team doesn’t – invariably leading to friction.  As a result, Marketing develops what they believe to be great “qualified” leads for Sales, which Sales then ignores or rejects them as not worth their time.  To further complicate the issue, many of our clients hire BDRs/SDRs to help with “lead generation” to bridge the gap but never define the role, responsibilities, reporting relationships, and KPIs for this role clearly.  What results is a waste of time, energy, and money. The bottom line is, CSOs do not want “leads,” they want “qualified opportunities"!

Changing Behaviors to Break Down the Barriers

The key to resolving this challenge is to get Marketing and Sales working as a synchronized team with the common objective and motivation of finding and winning new customers and maximizing the potential of current customers – in other words, breaking down the silos!  Many companies have moved to a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) structure – that may include combining Marketing and Sales – to start to address the issue.  But until roles, objectives, processes, success metrics, and incentives get aligned, behaviors will not change. 

Marketing needs to aggressively find winnable, meaningful opportunities for Sales to close, and Sales needs to participate in the discussion of what a winnable, meaningful opportunity looks like leveraging the data and analytic rigor often found in marketing and revenue operations. This needs to be an ongoing process (e.g., monthly, quarterly).  When the silos come down and trust re-emerges, amazing things happen – targeting becomes a science, messaging and differentiation become crisp, campaigns start generating new accounts and new buyers in existing accounts, sales productivity increases, deal volume and velocity through the pipeline accelerates, and everyone starts making more money.

More Barriers to Break Down with Existing Customers

A similar challenge is often found in managing/expanding existing customers.  In the early stage of a company’s development, a single person can manage a relationship, handle service and satisfaction issues, and look for opportunities to expand the account.  As account bases expand and customers get larger, division of labor sets in and soon there is an Account Manager team, a Customer Success team, a Customer Service team, and maybe an Inside Sales team for the long tail of smaller customers.  These teams become siloed as well, each with their own metrics and objectives, and communication begins to suffer.  We frequently hear customers of our clients complain that they have trouble knowing “who to talk to anymore” and the relationship greatly deteriorates as a result.

As with the Marketing/Sales challenge, the “silo mentality” in serving the existing account base needs to be eliminated, creating a seamless organization that is focused on a common set of customer-centric objectives (e.g., quality, service, growth) where roles, processes, and communications are clear and well-integrated.  Easy to say, but harder to make happen. 

As pressure to sustain better than market growth (both organically and through M&A) and enhance valuation intensifies each year, businesses are evolving at ever greater speeds.  To create a business that can scale cohesively and sustain accelerated growth, the revenue-generating assets (people, processes, systems, data) must be driving to the same goals and be tightly integrated with the growth strategy.  Marketing, Sales, Channels, Inside Sales, Account Management, Customer Support, Customer Success and all the support functions and systems that support these roles need to be considered as part of a “commercial coverage model” or ecosystem that is laser focused on the customer and is able to evolve seamlessly as business and market conditions change.

Creating this kind of collaborative, customer-focused structure in a mature organization takes discipline and intention, but it is worth the investment of time and resources to set companies up for success in the long run – and all the growth they can handle.

ABOUT BLUE RIDGE PARTNERS

Blue Ridge Partners is recognized as the most experienced impactful and respected management consulting firm that is exclusively focused on helping companies accelerate profitable revenue growth. We have worked with over 1,200 companies worldwide on commercial model transitions, strategic pricing engagements and due diligence assignments. We are known for rolling up our sleeves, being pragmatic in our analyses and delivering tangible results that focus on the “how” of execution. Based on our significant experience we have amassed extensive knowledge of the issues that affect revenue performance. www.blueridgepartners.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Corey Torrence is a Managing Director at Blue Ridge Partners. Mr. Torrence's career has focused on achieving revenue growth and profitable bottom-line results in both the consulting and business space. Before joining Blue Ridge Partners, Corey served as CEO and was on the boards of several global marketing and technology companies. You can reach Corey by phone: (917) 593-6844 or email: ctorrence@blueridgepartners.com.